Every successful #equinegirlboss started somewhere. For some, like Alexandra Martel, the dream of creating a company came to fruition at an early age. With more than 200,000 active members across 32 different countries, it’s safe to say that Alex built a community in Horsealot like no other. And it all started from a passion to connect people who share the same interests in horses.
Here’s what Alex had to share about getting her start as an equestrian entrepreneur and growing Horsealot over the years:
1. How did Horsealot come about?
I have always been truly passionate about consumer applications, and more specifically the social models that tech companies work to find in order to always connect people in a new way. As a rider myself, I felt the need for a connection with everyone sensitive to the equestrian lifestyle, just as I was.
2. Did you have any other ideas for platforms you wanted to create before settling on Horsealot?
I always continuously think of new concepts and ideas, not necessarily related to the equestrian industry, Horsealot is the first one that I actually built. It evolved a lot as a platform itself during the past 3 years, I try to experiment my ideas as much as possible when I see a potential new product direction.
3. Who is Horsealot for?
Horsealot is an exclusive social network inspired by equestrian lifestyle. We connect mainly young women from every corner of the world, passionate about the lifestyle gravitating around horses, meaning fashion, travel, art and sport. They share a common sensitivity for elegance and performance.
Even though the connecting element is horses, our users talk about a very wide range of topics and have a lot in common.
We have broadened the scope of the community progressively, and are now even starting to attract individuals who are not necessarily active riders, but who admire the beauty of the lifestyle around horses.
4. What can Horsealot offer equestrian enthusiasts that they can’t find on other platforms?
Our community itself and its spirit are unique. We created a high quality cocoon for young women to connect around their love for horses, fashion and lifestyle. Horsealot allows you to broaden the scope of your network, and not only to find the people that you already know. The discussions and features are open, our added value is to connect you to entirely new individuals.
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5. You made a deliberate decision to call it a community or network platform instead of a blog or website. Why did you do that?
Horsealot is the platform, we are not a content editor, our users are. Our role is to connect them and give them the tool to express themselves. Which explains why our model is social, and not the one of a media.
6. Why build the site around questions?
The vision of Horsealot is to create a powerful network which can provide meaningful discussions to our users. It was an iterative process, but we settled on a short questions model as the pillar of the network. This model has been the most effecient and interactive so far for our community, it has generated the best discussions.
Speaking generally, the aspect that passionates me the most about creating consumer apps is precisely this iterative process to find the right feature model for a target community.
7. What are equestrians talking about on Horsealot that you don’t see them talking about on sites like Facebook?
We created a very preserved cocoon on Horsealot, the discussions are always extremely nice and qualitative, the feminine sensitivity of our users and their authenticity contribute to it a lot. The initial connecting element is horses, however the scope of the discussions is wide, our users talk about fashion, lifestyle and sport. They share their horse riding tips, talk about the latest designer trends, or their travels around the world. Horses are attached to a strong lifestyle above all, the topics of the discussions are truly representative of this lifestyle.
8. Why was it so important to build relationships with ambassadors and partners early on?
We admire and respect our ambassadors in many ways, may they be olympic athletes or top models, each of them has provided us with important insights as for how to build our product.
9. How did working with ambassadors help you to grow Horsealot so fast?
They all follow very different life paths, they represent this connection that we want to create with Horsealot, they help us grow our community every day by being a trusted and genuine voice for our brand.
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10. How do you hope Horsealot will effect the equestrian community?
My strongest desire from the start has been to federate individuals around equestrian lifestyle, I genuinely want this vision to effect the equestrian community in a way that it would open it to the rest of the world, and attract more attention on it. Our goal is to consider horses not only as a sport, but as a lifestyle which has the powerful ability of connecting individuals who are not necessarily active riders but who love the authenticity of the riders’ lifestyle, may it be through fashion, lifestyle or art.
11. Your WEDNESDAY ASK events with athletes and equestrian personalities are one of my favorites to attend. Who have been some of the most notable guests to date?
Each of our guests is carefully curated by Justine, our marketing manager. Justine provides a good balance between notoriety, lifestyle and sport for these sessions. Our members also help her choose her guests by sharing the personnalities that they would dream to talk to. We had for example Mavis Spencer (miss Golden Globe), Alex Lutz (actor), Marc Olivier Fogiel (TV show host) and many other notable guests such as olympic athletes or influencers from all around the world. We are extremely grateful for their willingness to share their life story with us, and to participate in these sessions. As a team, it made us discover absolutely incredible facets of the personalities of these public figures, we feel very lucky about this.
12. In the age of so many social media platforms and digital distractions – What are some of the challenges you face in getting people to sign up and interact with the platform?
This is a very good question, and the heart of our business. The main challenge can be broken down into two distinct problematics which are (i) acquisition and (ii) retention. Learning how to acquire our users at the cheapest cost is key to scale, but learning how to keep them hooked on the app every day is key to make a viable consumer app business.
We are lucky that our target audience with Horsealot, and the typical profile of our users, is very tech saavy and deeply passionate about our vertical of focus. They build a strong affect with our community, our team keeps a close relationship with our members. We are not only building a community, we are building a brand and an imaginary around it which brings a completely differentiated experience from generalist social media. We have a good referral – every new user brings us 3 new users – and we developed an efficient retargetting system to acquire and activate new members.
Juliette in our team is in charge of optimizing all these funnels, she experiments many new ideas to always improve our performance. She insures that the community grows in a healthy way, and that our brand is perfectly represented in every new member who joins the network.
13. How can individuals and brands help Horsealot grow so it can help them?
Our members help Horsealot’s growth by referring the app to friends, which brings even more valuable interactions on the network. Brands are now strategic partners for us, many very established companies have supported us from the start because they connected with our vision. They help us bring unique experiences to our users through events, advantages, access to personalities etc… Corentin is our team member in charge of all these strategic partnerships, and we are very excited to start working with global fashion brands, which is the next step for us this year at this level.
14. What has surprised you most about the success of Horsealot?
The genuine willingness and generosity of our users who have always dedicated so much energy to connect with our team, give us their feedback, teach us about what they know in order to help us evolve as a team. They truly have been part of our tribe from the start. Some even travel to Paris to spend an afternoon at our office to brainstorm with us. The federating ability of Horsealot’s vision is what has striked me the most, and what opened us the door to the most inspiring personalities in many different industries (media, finance, fashion, art…). Horsealot has been a story of encounters from the start.
15. Are there any new features or upcoming upgrades that you’re excited about and would like to give us a sneak peek into?
Thomas is our Chief Technical Officer, with whom I brainstorm a lot on the product direction along with the rest of the team. Our challenge for 2019 product wise is to find the best model in order to welcome more and more members who are not necessarily riders but who want to join the community for its unique lifestyle character. We’ll be releasing as usual many evolutions throughout the coming months, and are excited to bring the product to the next step of its social model.
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